Consider the Change

The transformation in true Christianity is supernatural and profound. Not everyone who professes to be a Christian has experienced it. But without such a change, there is no authentic Christian life or true hope. Consider that the change is

From death to life
From blindness to sight
From slavery to freedom
From rebellion to submission
From darkness to light
From dead spirit to new birth
From self love to sacrificial love
From religious externalism to inner motivation
From the lordship of our flesh to the lordship of Christ

The change is so profound in true regeneration that it really makes no difference where a person starts that life in his or her journey, or whether a person thinks he or she is born into the previous lifestyle or simply chose it. Christ is able to make every person new, conforming that person to Christ’s new and better life from the inside out. He brings this new believer into the new and better destiny also, with complete forgiveness because Christ’s death in the place of that person removes all true deserved legal guilt before God. The transformed person lives happily under Christ’s gracious benevolent authority.

The new person in Christ then wants to obey Christ. Therefore, attempts to negotiate how the old life can be kept to any degree is a non-starter. The Spirit of God helps the person prior to Christ to be convinced of sin and need and potential in Christ. The humble person who comes to Christ believes that the life being left is a disappointing mess and damning, destructive and pitiful. He is escaping from it. He is being rescued or “saved.” That old life, being such a failure, is part of the motivation to come to Christ. But Christ’s beauty and offered forgiveness and eternal life will be even more alluring. With the change God causes, all is surprisingly different as hope enters the chambers of death, like brilliant light in a pitch-black cave.

Jesus described the necessity of this change with these simple words: “You must be born again.” He is right. Without this supernatural change, there is really no hope.